Where are you only seeing that two cores are being detected? What operating system and 32bit or 64bit are you using? How long ago did it start to happen? Have you changed anything in your bios settings?

Download CPUID and check to see if everything looks normal or post a screenshot of the CPU tab.

Haha, The Slayer, CPUID is the program that made me realise the problem! I don't know how long ago it was exactly, I just remember clicking on it (think it was to check if the program needed updating) and suddenly I realised there were 2 cores instead of 4.

Also, when I go into Task Manager and try and set affinity to a task, it only comes up with two 2 CPUs, when I know for a fact that it used to display 4.

I've made no changes to the BIOS that I'm aware of of late - and I'm using 32-bit Windows 7 Ultimate.

I'll give you the appropriate screenshots in a later post as I'm currently typing this one from my laptop.

Thanks for replying so promptly. I was worried that my thread would get overlooked even though it's in the right forum.

Try unplugging power from the computer, removing the processor and bios battery. Wait about a minute, then put the battery and processor back in and boot it up and see if that does anything.

Ohh, just thought of something else. Click start and type in "msconfig" into the search bar. Go to the Boot tab and click "Advanced Options...". If the "Number of processors:" box is checked, uncheck it. Try this first.

Hmm. Odd. I was going to show you all my specs but the program I use says it can't initialise the DLL.

And here's the screenshot you requested:

Edit: I did what you suggested with msconfig, ran CPU-Z and got a driver error: "The error code 0x102 (258) occurred during parsing." The program won't work now, haha.

I'd also like to say that my PC runs like a piece of shit and lags even whilst playing Counter-Strike: Source with bots (i.e. no network connection). Even with the lowest settings, and obviously with the CPU and GPU I have it should be able to run CSS with ease. It never used to lag either. My CPU usage is also always stupidly high.

I didn't notice that. Good *bleep*ing point, that shit's supposed to be running near 3200, and it's really loud regardless of speed tbh. I've done nothing to the BIOS since that first screenshot, and I don't have any hardware optimization software on my PC that'd mess with that shit.

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